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Life documentation by PiX ‘n’ PaLs: good idea, but I don’t want to register (again)

This is something new: yesterday I received an email from Frans Ekman, co-founder of PiX ‘n’ PaLs. He sent me a blog post about his company, which I could either copy/ paste or modify. That approach makes the blogger’s life easier.

The core idea is to document your life together with your friends in a collaborative way. Your life, or “The Story of Your Life”, consists of events that you have participated in. An event can be for example a wedding, a party, a vacation or any important happening in your life. Any user can create a new event and invite the people who participated, so that everyone can post their photos and memories to the same place.

You can also publish your “life story” on any blog or social network. Good idea. Nice alternative for the outdated phenomenon known as a photo album. Yet I don’t feel like subscribing.., again.

I don’t want to go through all the hassle of inviting friends and family, building another profile and transferring all the photos I already have on Flickr and Facebook to PiX ‘n’ PaLs.

Connect different social networks

Instead, I’d love to integrate the idea of PiX ‘n’ PaLs in existing friends and family networks like Facebook or sites like MyHeritage. Maybe in the form of a Facebook app or some sort of aggregator which also slurps up my existing contacts and users.

The idea behind the Finnish bootstrapping project of Frans Ekman and Jarl Törnroos is worth another look. Building a whole new social network based on photo sharing is not the way to go. People are used to the superb UI and experience of networks like LinkedIn and (until recently) Facebook and there’s no way you can compete with that – unless you’re a extremely talented designer. Instead, I’d gladly accept the challenge of finding ways to connect existing social networks to make life documentation possible.

Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor in Chief of Internet at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. He also served as The Next Web’s blog’s first blogger and Editor in Chief, back in 2008. At De Correspondent, Ernst-Jan serves as publisher, fostering the expansion of the platform.